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So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast
Ep. 271: Minecraft, censorship, and threats to press freedom with Clayton Weimers
01:03:30
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, it's Nico here. A quick note before we get started with today's show. The conversation you're about to hear was recorded on Friday, April 24. It's a conversation about press freedom. So, as you're listening, you might wonder, why don't Nico and Clayton address what happened at the White House Correspondents Dinner over the weekend? Well, that's because the dinner happened the day after our recording. We pre recorded the conversation to be released to coincide with the publication of the New World Press Freedom Index. Now, as some of you might know, especially if you are in D.C. the White House Correspondents Dinner is an annual tradition meant to celebrate the First Amendment. The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. Its protections for free speech and a free press are meant to ensure we solve our differences with words, not violence. What the Guntman intended to accomplish last Saturday at the Washington Hilton was the antithesis of the First Amendment. Free speech is what we do instead of violence. Now, I should also note, I was at the White House Correspondents Dinner. I was seated at the back of the ballroom, two tables from the doors that lead to the stairway. The gunman was apprehended at the top of those stairs. My tablemates and I knew right away that the loud noises we heard were gunshots. We all got low, then we smelled the gunpowder. Much of what happened next is well documented, so I won't go into all of that here. Suffice it to say, I was struck by the professionalism of the journalists at my table and throughout the room. Many of them moved quickly to document what happened and to coordinate coverage. Despite the spotty cell reception in the basement ballroom. I saw many reporters in their evening finest, reporting on camera in the minutes after the shooting and later rushing to the White House to cover President Trump's press conference. In the conversation you're about to hear, Clayton discusses the challenges facing a free press today, including the physical threats they face in doing their jobs. He talks about how his organization, Reporters Without Borders, has started providing reporters with protective equipment, including bulletproof vests. I don't think any reporters at the Washington Hilton last Saturday thought they might need those vests to attend a dinner celebrating the First Amendment. President Trump said he would like the dinner to be rescheduled. We'll see if that happens. But regardless what happened over the weekend, further highlights not only the importance of press freedom, but also the very real threats and challenges reporters can face every day in the course of doing their job. Now onto today's show.
- [02:34]
B
There's a lot of places where the problem isn't overt state censorship. It's subtle pressure from the government. It is a lack of access. It is a lack of opportunity. It is a culture of fear. And what country best illustrates that problem in democracies? Right now, it's the United States. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
- [02:59]
A
You're listening to so to Speak, the Free Speech podcast, brought to you by fire, the foundation for individual rights and expression. Welcome back to so to Speak, the Free Speech podcast, where every other week we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define your right to free speech. I'm your host, Nico perino. Back in 2020, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders opened the doors to a virtual library inside the popular computer game called Minecraft. Known as the Uncensored Library, this Minecraft world preserves the work of journalists who have been censored, jailed, exiled, or in some cases, even killed for practicing their craft. While some of the works featured in the library are censored in certain countries, say Iran or Saudi Arabia, Minecraft as a game is usually not censored. So the creation of the library is a creative hack to circumvent state censorship and make the works accessible to millions of around the world. Most recently, the library opened a new room focused on growing obstacles to press freedom in the United States. The new wing reminds Americans that subtler, less direct threats to a free press happen everywhere, even at home. Reporters Without Borders tracks these threats closely in their annual Press Freedom Index, with the latest report being released today. When you are hearing this podcast, given the release of the report and World Press Freedom day approaching on May 3, Wednesday, we thought it an appropriate time to unpack the state of press freedom across the globe. And joining us to do so is Clayton Weimers, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders usa. Clayton, welcome onto the show.
- [04:41]
B
Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
- [04:43]
A
So the World Press Freedom Index came out today, and America, if I'm reading this correctly, is what, 64th on the list? That's down from somewhere in the 50s last year?
- [04:54]
B
It is indeed. We've dropped seven places this year on the index. And I think for anyone who's been paying attention for the past year, probably not shocking that the United States is doing worse on press freedom than it was 12, 18 months ago. But what I do think surprises a lot of people is finding out how low we were in the first place.
- [05:14]
A
Hmm. Yeah. So how were low were we in the first place? Like, have we always been in the 50s, 60s range, or were we ever up here with these mostly Scandinavian countries, plus Ireland in the green zone?
- [05:27]
B
Yeah. We've never quite reached the heights of Northern Europe, but when the index first started recording these things, we were consistently in the high 20s, which is still, you know, there's a lot of countries where the press is free and so being number one is in the end, all be all. Norway.
- [05:43]
A
Yeah, Norway is number one.
- [05:45]
B
Norway is always number one. This is their tenth straight year with the top spot. But the United States over the past decade has seen a pretty sustained decline year over year. And we've seen that decline measured on every sub score that we do.
- [05:59]
A
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about those.
- [06:01]
B
We look at five different indicators. Economic, political, legislative, sociocultural, and safety. Safety is weighted a little bit heavier. And so if you are a country where journalists are being killed or attacked in the streets or jailed, that's going to have a significant impact on your score. But across all five indicators, we've seen a steady deterioration of the conditions in the United States. And that's been going on for the better part of a decade. What that tells us, it's not the fault of one particular politician, one particular political party. It has spanned multiple presidential administrations, Congress changing hands several times. It's really tempting to lay this at the feet of Donald Trump. And don't worry, I can get into my criticisms of the Trump administration, but it's not just the Trump problem. The long term backsliding really betrays that there are structural deficiencies that are holding back press freedom in this country.
- [06:54]
A
Are there legal deficiencies? So when you think of the legal regime in the United States, the First Amendment, its protection for a free press is there right there in the First Amendment. You think it's the strongest protection for freedom of speech in the world, but yet America is still 64th.
- [07:13]
B
Well, I think you probably know this as well as I do. How could it be any clearer than Congress shall make no laws?
- [07:18]
A
Yeah.
- [07:18]
B
Right. And yet we have problems all the time with free expression, not just press freedom.
- [07:23]
A
So you're measuring the issue culturally as well? In a certain sense, yeah.
- [07:27]
B
We try to take a holistic approach to the whole thing. And on the legal front, you know, you look at that decade of backsliding, we haven't seen any significant legislative reforms to respond to some of the threats that have emerged to press freedom at all at the federal level. Meanwhile, at the local level, municipal and state governments have been chipping away at press rights left and right. One of the big trends in the Past few years was during COVID a lot of state capitals shooed the press press away, wouldn't let them onto the floor, wouldn't even let them into the gallery in certain states.
- [08:00]
A
Well, you're seeing that at the federal level, too, where the Trump administration is pushing and the Associated Press out of, out of the White Houses, as well as reporters who are not going to sign on to the Pentagon's press rules, which was most of the pool in that case.
- [08:16]
B
Absolutely. And, you know, so many of these tactics have been developed at local levels first. And so the pandemic's over and some states still didn't let the press back in. Other, other municipalities are passing laws, this is especially true in California, to restrict press access to homeless encampments because they don't want shots of the police clearing homeless people out of public parks because it's a really bad look and people react very badly to it. But that is a public interest story that journalists should be able to document. We've had journalists arrested just because they were hanging around homeless encampments, interviewing people who live there. And then the police came in and did a sweep, and the rest of the journalists, too. We're also seeing a rash of laws that are being attempted in various states to limit how close a journalist, or really anyone with a camera can get to a police officer in the conduct of their official duties, whatever that means. You know, anytime a police officer's out on the street, you could argue that they are working and that they're officially on the clock. But what they're really trying to do is stop people from taking pictures of law enforcement officers while they're doing things that they don't want people to see them doing.
- [09:27]
A
Now, what does this economic category mean?
- [09:30]
B
The economic category means a few different things. And so if you look at the state of the news media ecosystem right now in the United States, you can't ignore the fact that there's massive layoffs year, year after year. Media outlets are shutting down. And it's especially happening at the local level. We talk a lot about news deserts and a crisis of local news. On average, two local newspapers close in this country every week. There's great research being done at Northwester University with the Local News Initiative. They keep track of this thing. They have a really good interactive map that I would encourage people to take a look at after they've looked at our interactive map on RSF.org, which shows exactly where the news desert crisis is at its worst. There are tens of millions of Americans living in A county where there's no local news at all.
- [10:21]
A
So you kind of have to have news in order to have a free press. I mean, presumably you could have a free press without any reporters, but that wouldn't mean much.
- [10:28]
B
Yeah, it wouldn't mean anything. You know, we always harp on the three facets that we think are important for press freedom, which is safety, independence, and plurality. You need a safe press to be able to do its job. You need an independent press that isn't under pressure from either economic interests, like the ownership and the advertisers, or politicians. And then you need pluralism. You need a lot of different voices in that marketplace of ideas. Otherwise you're not really getting the full picture. Right.
- [10:55]
A
Yeah. So let's talk about the Trump administration a little bit. What are the biggest threats that you see coming from that administration that would play into these rankings?
- [11:02]
B
Oh, I mean, that could be the whole topic of our conversation today. I've been categorizing the Trump administration as waging a war on press freedom. It seems almost every day they're taking a new action to somehow restrict or harm, insult, weakening the press in some way or another. And it started on day one of the presidential administration. The President signed a flurry of executive orders, one of which was supposedly to shore up free expression, but has led to all of these different steps to be taken to, say, eliminate funding for public media or to justify other restrictions on access. You know, he's blocked the Associated Press from being able to attend White House events or aboard Air Force One just because they refuse to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, which is a clear. As clear cut a case of viewpoint discrimination as I think you can ever find. Sometimes these are gray areas that one's not.
- [12:00]
A
Yeah. Although the courts have. Have the courts have done on the other side of that one, or at least the circuit court did the district court, the.
- [12:07]
B
Yeah, there. There have been a mixed bag, I would say, from the courts, though I will say on the whole, the courts have been very strong on press freedom. So we're suing the Trump administration, we being rsf, to say Voice of America. And for those who aren't familiar, Voice of America is a public broadcaster, but it's very unique in its mission. It is set up to bring reliable information to people in other countries primarily living under authoritarianism, and at its peak had an audience of over 300 million weekly. And these are primarily people living under authoritarian conditions and censorship conditions. And in many cases, VOA was alongside its peers at Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, which have also been affected by this, one of the, if not the only, reliable source of information for these countries. And the Trump administration, in the first go around, way back when, in Trump 1.0, tried to turn these into propaganda outlets for the White House. They failed to do so because by legal statute, these are editorially independent media organizations that just happen to get federal funding. So they failed to do that. And in Trump 2.0, they decided, we're just going to shut it down, and so they zeroed it out.
- [13:21]
A
Did they zero it out through Congress, or was it an executive order that zeroed it out because Congress is the only institution that can appropriate funds or presumably, and not spend them?
- [13:30]
B
This is a fight we're having in a lot of different contexts, but this was just an executive order that the President signed saying that we're going to get rid of these broadcasters. So we've taken the administration to court and we won an on summary judgment. They're, of course, appealing. But essentially, we have established that this was an unconstitutional executive order to shut down voa. The judges ordered all the journalists back to work. You know, we can have a debate about whether, you know, we want taxpayer dollars funding the media like this. We can have a debate about whether this is a good way to use soft power. We can even have a debate about whether soft power matters, and if that's what we want to base our foreign policy decisions on. But that's not the debate we're having. The debate we're having is a runaway executive that just has it out for the media and doesn't care what the law actually says?
- [14:21]
A
Yeah. Well, the most recent event that I assume you see as an attack on press freedom is Cash Patel suing the Atlantic and one of its reporters for reporting on his alleged drinking while FBI director. Do you see that as an emblematic of what you see from the broader Trump administration, and do you see that action in particular as a threat to press freedom?
- [14:43]
B
Yes. I can't emphasize enough, though, that this is actually one of the areas where the law is extremely clear. You can't just sue a media outlet because you don't like their coverage. And this has been reinforced by court decision after court decision, going way back to the civil rights era, when we got the Sullivan decision that essentially inoculated the New York Times from lawsuits from Mississippi politicians who were mad that the New York Times called them segregationists, essentially.
- [15:19]
A
Yeah. And for our listeners, some of the history here is interesting. You had northern publications or national publications that were sending their reporters to the south in many cases, to report on the civil rights movement. They were being brought up defamation, were being sued for defamation and put in front of Southern juries. And I read an article, I think it was in a collection of essay called First Amendment Stories that said something like, There was $2 billion of outstanding judgments against these various publications because a northern or national news publication could not win a defamation case in front of a Southern jury. And so what happened with the New York Times here is they ran a ad that was meant to raise money for Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists in the South. There were some inaccuracies in that ad. They were sued by Mr. Sullivan in this case, not because Mr. Sullivan was mentioned in particular in the ad, but because his. He was a sheriff or something like that, but because his office was mentioned and he assumed that that cast aspersions on his reputations or whatnot. And the court ended up saying in its ruling that in order for a public official, that is a government official, to win a defamation claim, the plaintiff in that case, in this case, Sullivan, would need to prove actual malice, which is knowledge of falsely falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. Now, President Trump and others in the conservative ecosystem have had it out for the Sullivan standard for many years. There have been some Supreme Court justices who have also looked at askance, the Sullivan standard and in particular its application beyond public officials also to public figures. For example, and I believe Alan Dershowitz has a lawsuit against CNN that he's petitioned the Supreme Court to hear right now that would either take a look at Sullivan again or take a look at its application to public figures like him. So there have been. There's been a concerted movement of sorts to undermine Sullivan. And journalists have been concerned about this because they have seen what a lower standard for defamation means for their reporting, given their experience during the civil rights movement. Now, I should say in the Atlanta case and Clayton, correct me if I'm wrong, this is a reporter who had dozens of sources and spent months reporting the story. It's hard to see how you prove actual malice in that case.
- [17:51]
B
Actual malice is an incredibly high standard. It's. It's one of the strongest legal protections that we have in this country that has prevented the floodgates from opening against what we call strategic lawsuits against participation, slaps, slaps, which would, you know, if, if lawsuits like this were allowed to proceed, it would paralyze the media. They would never be able to publish anything that they thought might open them up to a lawsuit. And, you know, In a case like this. Yeah, I think, I think it's a pretty slam dunk case for the, for the Atlantic. I also think that if you're trying to convince people that you're not actually drunk on the job, it doesn't really look good to file a lawsuit rife with spelling errors throughout.
- [18:34]
A
Yeah. Or that comes on the heels of you being filmed chugging beers with the USA men's hockey team after they won the gold medal in the Olympics.
- [18:43]
B
But look thin skinned. Public officials have been trying to look for weaknesses in the Sullivan standard for years. Sarah Palin sued the New York Times a couple years ago in what was a pretty transparent effort to just get this to the Supreme Court and overturn it otherwise. Like, that's why she chose the New York Times to sue, because it's symbolic.
- [19:01]
A
Sure.
- [19:02]
B
But the Sullivan standard has held and I trust that it will continue to hold. There have been some Supreme Court justices who have, have suggested that they would like to look at it. And one Supreme Court justice is outright
- [19:13]
A
said here, Clarence Thomas. Yes. And then Gorsuch has also suggested as
- [19:17]
B
much as well, yeah, but two is a long way from five.
- [19:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It might be hard to get to five. And the reason that, who was it Justice Brennan said in the, in, in the Sullivan decision that you need an actual malice standard is because you want public debate on public issues, including public debate and public reporting on government officials to be, in his words, uninhibited, robust, and wide open. And you have seen the Trump administration and President Trump himself use these defamation lawsuits to go after their critics. And it's just a coincidence that before I came into the studio to record this with you, our research team put together a list of the, the number of defamation and other slap strategic lawsuits against public participation style lawsuits that the Trump administration has filed since 2023, including during his campaign. And they tallied 25 total, as well as six threatened lawsuits that have not yet been filed. So this is definitely a tactic. Fire, of course, is in court defending, defending the Iowa pollster and Seltzer for her poll that she conducted before the 2024 election that showed Kamala Harris winning in that election. But, you know, it's, it's something that President Trump has a history of going on the record and saying, you know, even if he doesn't win these lawsuits, it enacts a price on those who have to defend against them. He said something to the effect of, you know, I spent a couple bucks. But he, the reporter that he sued spent a lot more in Time and money. I mean, even if you have a slam dunk defense, it still takes a while to get to that motion to dismiss stage. That's why you have anti slap statutes that help defendants in these cases be able to dismiss the lawsuits fairly early on in the process. But there is still a process. And as you mentioned earlier, there hasn't been movement at the federal level to enact protections for the press in the form of, for example, a federal anti slap statute.
- [21:19]
B
I mean, you're making my point for me here. That would be one of the key things that Congress could do if it were serious about shoring up press freedom is pass federal anti slap. Another thing they could do is pass the Press act, which came very close to being passed under President Biden. It cleared the House unanimously. You know what clears the House unanimously these days? But for one reason or another, the Senate simply never brought it to a vote and it expired. That's a bill that would codify protections for journalistic sources. There's essentially a big loophole in the law right now that allows federal law enforcement to pry into the communications between journalists and their sources under basically a vague national security umbrella. And this would.
- [22:04]
A
It's always national security, man.
- [22:06]
B
Well, in fact, that's a big theme in this year's index. You know, it's a great transition. Is the globally speaking the indicator. Of those five indicators that's fallen the sharpest this year is the legal indicator. And that's not just in the United States. What we're seeing is on the one hand, you have a weakening of legal infrastructures that are meant to protect journalism and access to information for the public. And you also have increased weaponization of legal infrastructure against journalism, especially when it comes to national security and secrecy laws. And this is something that really kicked off in the wake of 911 and has just continued unabated and not just in the United States. And, and so you see a lot of lawfare against media outlets and individual journalists by states using laws that are ostensibly there to protect national security, but in practice being used to stifle expression.
- [23:01]
A
To look at this from the other side, if you look at the polling about around journalism and journalists, it seems like the media industry as a whole is kind of in the tank. Public support for reporters and journalism seems to have been sliding over recent years. To the extent there are attacks on press freedom in the United States. Do does the news industry have, does the news industry bear any responsibility for those attacks?
- [23:29]
B
I think that's a great question and I think the answer is yes. But it's more complicated than that.
- [23:36]
A
Sure.
- [23:37]
B
This is April 30th. So two weeks ago I was at Ole Miss for a symposium on trust in journalism, a gathering of mostly journalists and then a few people like me who, who just kind of work on the outskirts of journalism to discuss how do we come up with a better understanding as an industry of how we can build trust. And we produced something called the Oxford Declaration, which was a series of value statements about what it means to be a trustworthy journalist and how to produce trustworthy journalism. And we spent a good part of the day doing a lot of self flagellation about how the media needs to do better, about being transparent, about not necessarily blending the line between editorial and journalistic content, which is something that I think we need to see more of.
- [24:30]
A
Well, the New York Times didn't used to have an op ed page, right?
- [24:33]
B
Yeah. I think it's kind of this unique feature of American journalism that you have this extremely partisan opinion section side by side with hard. And I think in the newsroom it's very clear to them what the difference between those two things. But for a lot of people, it's just content. And it's hard to make that distinction. And maybe when everyone was reading a physical newspaper and there were different sections and you could say this is the news section and this is the editorial, and by the way, these are the comics, this isn't journalism either. Maybe that was an easier case to make. But in this day and age where everything is not delivered via algorithm to our phones, you're just scrolling through a stream of content and it's all just flattened content. And that's not even just within the confines of a particular media outlet. So now you have this situation where journalism is competing side by side with other forms of content in a way it never has had to before. And that has all kinds of implications for the trust as well. Because if in the public consciousness everyone is just consuming content and they're going from New York Times article to cat video, to my ex's vacation photos, to state sponsored propaganda to hate speech, like just back and forth between all these different types of content, in your mind, it's all kind of equal. And so, yes, back to your question. The news media need to look to themselves to find ways to earn the trust of the public. But they're not the only ones to blame. I think Big Tech also has a lot of the blame here. They have one. Let's look at the record. They have taken away the ad revenue that the news media relied on now they're moving to a model that takes away the clicks to redirect traffic to news media sites.
- [26:23]
A
Yeah, these platforms want you to stay on them.
- [26:25]
B
Yeah, they give you AI generated answers on your Google search so you don't actually have to click on that media link. Facebook doesn't want anything to do with the news. They do everything in their power to avoid having to have news on their platforms. And even when they launched Threads, the Twitter competitor Adam Asseri, who headed up the project outright, said, we're going to deemphasize news in the feeds on Threads because we don't want that this to be that kind of platform. And so these are.
- [26:53]
A
Yeah. Did that come in the wake of the 2016 election where they were Facebook in this case or Metta, the parent company were brought in for a lot of criticism for how they were have seen to have supercharged the Trump campaign through Cambridge Analytica and whatnot.
- [27:08]
B
I think these are companies that are extremely fine tuned to public opinion and seem to just blow with the wind one way or the other. Because you're right. After 2016, they all did these mea culpas about how they're going to do better and be more trustworthy and incorporate these processes into the algorithms. And we had a lot at rsf, we had a lot of conversations with these companies because we have a lot of ideas on how you can make an algorithm deliver more trustworthy information and actually give journalism a little bit of a competitive advantage that it doesn't enjoy these days. But we all know now that they've all kind of swung in the opposite direction because the politics have gone the other way. There's a different presidential administration that has a very different view on what is and isn't censorship or what is and isn't the rule of of these companies in our media ecosystem.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg said they weren't going to throttle political content, for example, and yeah, on these platforms. But let me ask you a viewpoint diversity is a problem within the industry because I think there's this perception among much of the general public that these news outlets are predominantly left wing institutions unless they are outright branded as a conservative media outlet, for example, like Fox News or the Daily Signal, for example. Do you think that one of the ways to build trust is to create more viewpoint diversity within the newsroom? Is that something that a good editor should even look at? You know, I think one of the emblematic examples that really got a lot of people angry was the self flagellation at the New York Times After Tom Cotton wrote his op ed, I believe, in the summer of 2020, arguing that President Trump should bring in the troops to tamp down on Black Lives Matter protests, the editor ended up resigning. There was this whole uproar within the newsroom for even publishing the op ed in the first place. But then when he looked at the public opinion polling, Tom. Senator Tom Cotton's argument was widely popular. I think BY Something like 70% of the public agreed with the argument he was making. But if you were looking just inside the New York Times newsroom, it was wildly unpopular and indeed, people lost their jobs for even publishing that argument.
- [29:25]
B
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I would say, just to that very last point, I don't think it's the job of the news media to tell the public what it already thinks. And just because 70% of people might think a certain way, I don't think that is an indication that the media should pander to them. I think that's a much worse outcome and what we want.
- [29:48]
A
But I don't think that's what the editor in this case was doing. He was just publishing an argument from a United States senator that happened to reflect a broader public opinion in this case.
- [29:59]
B
Absolutely. And so I think this comes back to what is the difference between hard news and an editorial section? And if you are a newspaper with an editorial section, you're well within your rights to define the confines of what your overall viewpoint is. You should be transparent about what that is. I mean, there was a lot of blowback at the Washington Post recently because they redefined the kinds of editorial pieces they would run as being strictly about free markets, et cetera. And that got some criticism. I will say the good thing about that is that they're at least transparent about it. They're not pretending to be something that they're not. And if you are going to be an editorial section that publishes a wide variety of viewpoints, you got to be consistent about that as well and be transparent about that. At the end of the day, it's all about transparency. Are you being honest with your readers? That's. That's what you got to do. Then you have another section of the editorial section, which is the editorial board itself. Now, that is the view of the newspaper. And I think there's a debate to be had about whether it's appropriate for newspapers to have that kind of viewpoint. I think, personally, I think, yes, as long as, again, we're being very clear about what we're talking about here. But I think all of this just kind of gets mushed together. And the losers in all of this are the journalists who are not at all part of those discussions. They're not in those meetings, but they're the ones being thrown under the bus when everyone gets their pitchforks because the New York Times published a bad op ed.
- [31:38]
A
Yeah, well, to put the New York Times to the side, one interesting case study is the Wall Street Journal, which is regarded as a conservative newspaper, I believe, owned by News Corp, which is the Rupert Murdoch company, has a conservative editorial board, although not afraid to be critical of the Trump administration, but from a more conservative, libertarian leaning perspective. But on the news side, you have some of the most critical an investigatory reporting of the Trump administration happening and even in one case, a report about Trump's ties to Epstein and that, that image of the woman that he is alleged to have drawn and something like Jeffrey Epstein's birthday books. But in any case they Trump sued,
- [32:20]
B
which are you earned them a lawsuit. A case that's been thrown out. Another example of our courts really standing strong for press freedom right now, by the way.
- [32:26]
A
Yeah, so, you know, I ask these questions because I am a big fan of the news media. I went to college, Indiana University and majored in journalism. I think it's. Yeah, well, the journalism school is gone now.
- [32:38]
B
Well, we can, we can talk about what's going on at Indiana later in student press freedom. That's a whole other interesting topic.
- [32:43]
A
Yeah. They were the last ranked public university in fire's college free speech rankings in no small part to the ways that it is attacked journalism reporting. The student newspaper even came under fire for reporting on Indiana University's last place public University Ranking in FIRE's College Free Speech rankings.
- [33:03]
B
That's okay. Fire hates my alma mater too.
- [33:05]
A
What's your alma mater?
- [33:06]
B
Pitzer College, Claremont, California.
- [33:08]
A
Oh yeah.
- [33:08]
B
Usage hens.
- [33:09]
A
Yes. Yeah. Well, so I guess solidarity in the fact that you and I have colleges or universities that are in fire's crosshairs. But I went to the Ernie Pyle School. Ernie Pyle, a famed World War II war correspondent. And that was all collapsed into a broader media school at the university, which I love the legacy of the Ernie Pyle school and the journalism program there. I, I happen to be of the opinion that you don't need to go to journalism school to be a journalist. I think you can actually learn a lot from studying in another discipline and just working at the student newspaper, which you, you can do if you're a physics major, for example. But I was frustrated when I was at Indiana University that I couldn't take classes in the school. I forget what it was called, like the Telecommunication School, because I wanted to do some video journalism, for example, and the offerings in the journalism school were thin. But now the Indiana Daily Student, I think has run into problems. It's not publishing every day like it used to. I used to get off my bike and go to the, the newsstand and, and get a printed copy of the Indiana Daily Student every morning before I started my class and read it throughout the day. And that's just not there. I think it publishes like six or seven times a semester now.
- [34:19]
B
Well, the university effectively tried to shut it down. They fired the advisor, faculty advisor over the. What appears to be. Over the coverage that was critical of the administration, that the newspaper was going to put out an issue sharply criticizing the administration, timed to homecoming weekend, which, you know, it's a big time for any university when they're welcoming back the alumni and the boosters. And so they got ahead of that by saying, oh, actually you're not going to print anything ever again, starting with this issue. And we're finally the faculty advisor and we're going to be looking at the editorial independence of this newspaper. But it was also a great moment of student journalism solidarity because over at Baylor University they said, hey, we still have our printing presses. We'll print your newspaper for you and drive it over your campus and drop it off in time for alumni weekend. And these are two schools that are rivals.
- [35:11]
A
I didn't know that story. Wow.
- [35:12]
B
But that issue got out.
- [35:15]
A
Was that Baylor or Butler? I think Butler.
- [35:16]
B
Oh, you know what, I misspoke. It was Butler.
- [35:18]
A
Baylor's in Texas, I believe, and Butler is there in Indianapolis.
- [35:22]
B
Yeah, I make this mistake most March Madnesses as well. Forgetting which one is. Thank you for that fact.
- [35:28]
A
Well, there are a lot of people that get Indiana University wrong. Call it the University of Indiana. I'll never forget, I read a popular book about Washington D.C. called this Town and the author of that book referred to my alma mater as University of Indiana. And I shook my fist at him. But I was saying I'm a big fan of the news media in part also because of just the media ecosystem that we live in right now, where you have a fast moving news cycle, you have social media, you have artificial intelligence. It can be hard to tell what someone is claiming is true is actually true. And so my go to media habit or media consumption habit is to, if I see a big claim about a fast developing story is to go check what the Associated Press or Reuters in particular have said about it. And if they haven't reported it because they have these wire services, I just take a beat before I chime in.
- [36:20]
B
And it's another reason pluralism is so important. Because if you have this really bizarre, hard to believe story and only one sort of random outlet is reporting it, you know, I'm not saying that that means it's not true, but it starts to be a lot more credible once it shows up in other media outlets. Usually when there's this big leaked story, reporters are racing against each other at different outlets to get that story published first as soon as they have all their ducks in a row. So once one of them publishes all the others, like, well, all right, it's out there, so we better just go.
- [36:54]
A
Even if we can't source it.
- [36:55]
B
Exactly. But now they have another source because it's been published elsewhere.
- [36:59]
A
Sure.
- [36:59]
B
And so that's when, you know, pluralism acts as a trustworthiness indicator, in a sense, because the media keep each other honest. If you only have a few sources, that's bad. If we get to a place and, you know, this is what really worries me about the state of the news media ecosystem is I'm not worried about the New York Times. I'm not worried about the Wall Street Journal. They're profitable, they're growing, they're doing well. Everyone loves Wordle. But that is not the whole picture. We're losing all those local newspapers. And the New York Times does great work, but isn't going to cover your local school board hearing. It isn't going to be on the scene of an accident that's right off the highway that runs past your house. They're not gonna be investigating the local factory that might be polluting your. Well, they might be, but, you know, you need local reporters to do that, and you're not gonna get that. If we end up in a place where the media is so concentrated in New York and maybe LA and DC that's what we're really losing. And that drives more distrust, by the way, because the media suddenly reflects the communities a little bit less. If you don't have journalists who live among you, who, you know, who are reporting stories close to you, close to your home. And all you're getting from the news is national stories that occasionally parachute in when something bad happens in your. In your hometown that makes you distrust the media because it's not for you.
- [38:22]
A
And the people writing the stories don't have the sort of life experiences that could help inform those stories. For example, you know, if you're living in New York or la, you're probably on the left of the political spectrum. You might have never owned a gun or shot a gun. You might have never worked on a farm, for example. You've never, might have never attended a 4H fair. And these are all things that I think to the extent that the people writing these stories have experience that can be similar to the subjects that they're writing about, might as well help earn the trust of the subjects that they're writing about. What do you think of this new nonprofit newsroom model? You have some philanthropists now that are spending a lot of money or are donating, I should say, a lot of money to start up these, these independent newsrooms in places that have news deserts. Historically, the news media ecosystem has been largely a for profit enterprise.
- [39:14]
B
Yeah. And I think in the modern era, we are realizing the limits of the for profit model in the news media. I think there's plenty of room for different business models. And I think the success of a lot of nonprofit newsrooms is showing that this is a very viable path for a certain type of outlet. What concerns me is sustainability. You know, philanthropy can be capricious. Today, funding local news is kind of sexy for a lot of the big foundations, and that's great. I hope it stays that way forever. But what if it changes? What if we shift away to caring a lot more about something else as a philanthropic community? Then are those nonprofit newsrooms gonna have the rug pulled out from under them and not be able to continue? So, you know, I know that these foundations are thinking through that problem as well. They know that this is not the way to fund the news forever, and so they may.
- [40:13]
A
You could help them set up an endowment, for example.
- [40:15]
B
Exactly. And I've seen a lot of examples of that where say a foundation buys a building for the, for the local newspaper, that, that can be their headquarters and they can rent out the extra space. You know, that's an asset. And if they ever have problems and they want to just downsize a little bit, they can sell the building. That's another sort of like there's a lot of more, more safety net for them.
- [40:41]
A
So you've referred to your organization Reporters Without Borders in the shorthand as rsf. That's not the acronym that I would use for Reporters Without Borders. What does RSF stand for? And explain to our listeners a little bit what Reporters Without Borders is. Is it related to Doctors Without Borders, for example?
- [40:57]
B
Sort of. Actually, Reporters Without Borders is actually called Reporter Sans Frontiere. In French we were founded in France 41 years ago. Headquarters today remains in Paris. I run our North America office here in Washington D.C. where we are actually a completely separate 501C3 incorporated in the U.S. by the way, affiliated with the international organization. So for any donation minded listeners out there, you can get a tax refundable donation to RSF that way. But yes, we're headquartered in Paris and there is a little bit of French identity embedded in this organization to this day. Even though we're now very much an international organization, we have offices in 15 countries, we have a network of correspondence covering 150 countries. Essentially anywhere it is safe for us to be present, we are there.
- [41:49]
A
And when you say cover, you mean reporting on press freedom in those countries.
- [41:52]
B
Exactly. So our correspondence are our eyes and ears in the countries where we're not able to maintain an actual office and they feed us on the ground information. They help liaise with local officials in local media. So, you know, let's say we hear word that a journalist has been arrested in a country that's. Well, we'll probably hear the word from our correspondent first. But if we don't, we can ping our correspondent and say, can you get down to the jail and find out if this is true? Can you, you know, find out how to reach his family, how to contact their lawyer, all that stuff.
- [42:27]
A
So you investigate and you also help these journalists that are under pressure or being censored.
- [42:32]
B
We say we're the world's largest organization devoted to the safety, independence and pluralism of media. And if we're known for something, it's that map you have in front of you, the World Press Freedom Index that came out today where we rank every country. But as an organization and this is really key to our identity, we're not content to be monitors. We're not just here to name and shame. We're here to take action. And that action can be at the individual level on the ground. So helping journalists who have been arrested, wrongfully arrested or detained, investigating the cases of murdered journalists when the authorities are unwilling or unable to do so, we provide protective equipment in conflict zones. And by the way, just two weeks ago we launched a new protective program in the United States for the first time. You know, it's pretty startling that we're importing the programs that we run in Ukraine and Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of Congo into the United States.
- [43:27]
A
Why do it? No, I think some of our listeners would be a little shocked to hear that and maybe think it's, it's Hyperbolic or an overreaction.
- [43:35]
B
It is something that came directly from the feedback we were getting from reporters last summer. You might remember there was this series of no Kings protests and they were especially violent in Los Angeles. And what we kept seeing day after day is journalists coming under literal fire from massed law enforcement age agents, from God knows what agency because they were covering up their badges. And we counted dozens, I think in a two week period, 62 incidents where a member of the media was violently attacked just by law enforcement.
- [44:14]
A
And that ranged from because they were members of the media or because they were with the protesters. Or is it hard to tell?
- [44:20]
B
Sometimes it's hard to tell, sometimes it's not hard to tell. So there's this great video that we have, I shouldn't say great, it's great.
- [44:28]
A
And then so far it's indicative.
- [44:29]
B
There's this great. It's great in the sense that we, we so seldom get clear cut evidence like this. But it is a video of an Australian foreign correspondent in Los Angeles reporting, holding the microphone, talking straight to the camera about the protests that are going on in the background behind her. And you can see in the background a tactical geared up agent turns around, looks at her, picks up his weapon, points it directly at her, shoots her in the leg with a rubber bullet. She wasn't in the protest. She was literally live on the air in Australia and wasn't posing a threat to anyone and just became a target like that. And so there have been a number of incidents like that. There are other incidents that don't get captured on camera. And so we investigate and we talked to the journalists in question. But one of the things we kept hearing from journalists, and not just in Los Angeles by the way, is in Minneapolis, in Chicago, in New York, is that they show up to cover these protests in their communities, something they've been doing for a long time. And suddenly it's a little bit different. It's a lot more hostile, it's a lot more aggressive, it's getting a lot more violent. And we have journalists going to the hospital with concussions. One lost a finger, they're getting seriously injured, which threatens their ability to go back out the next day and keep covering the story. A lot of these are freelancers and they, they need to get out there and earn that paycheck. And so they kept telling us, we didn't know, we didn't know what gear we needed, we didn't know how to get the gear. It's expensive and we don't make a lot of money. No one was training us on this. And so we talked to.
- [45:59]
A
And the gear is like what, bulletproof vests, helmets, for the most part.
- [46:02]
B
I don't think most journalists need bulletproof vests. And we are lucky that we're not dealing with live ammunition as the problem in this country. That is what we do in Ukraine or in, in Gaza, for instance, in the United States, we are recommending a, we're going to get technical here, a level two, a vest which can be resistant to small caliber munitions. But mostly we want to make sure you're being protected. If you get struck with what's called less than lethal munitions.
- [46:31]
A
Rubber bullet.
- [46:31]
B
Rubber bullets, tear gas canisters, that sort of thing that can still kill you if you're not protected and if you get hit in the wrong place. But the most likely scenario is it's a date debilitating injury. And so we want to protect against that. It's also gas masks, it's first aid kits, because we want to make sure that if there are injuries in the field, you have what you need to treat the injury and know how to use it. So we're also, in addition to providing this ppe, partnering with some of our trusted peer organizations who are doing safety training. Because gear alone does not keep you safe. We know that from experience. You need to have situational awareness. You need to have what's called he fat training for safety. And nothing is a silver bullet. It's not going to solve all the problems. But we can at least help journalists do their jobs a little bit more safely this way.
- [47:17]
A
You mentioned freelancers. We're seeing a lot more freelancers in the journalism space with the advent of Substack and Beehive, for example. What do you think generally of these platforms that allow individual journalists to build their own following, so to speak, separate from an institution that they might have been, or in many cases were affiliated with before cnn. You know, Don Lemon is on Substack, for example. You have reporters leaving the Washington Post or the New York Times and starting their own substack to monetize their following and their writing.
- [47:52]
B
Well, it's definitely a reflection of where the news media economy has gone because there are fewer jobs in journalism, but there's no less need for journalism. And so a lot of journalists have found it's just easier and more profitable to set out on their own and do their own thing that way. And I think that's great. I think it is. It comes back to what I'm saying about pluralism. We need a lot of different Sources of information. We need a lot of different ways to reach people. But let's also be real about the limitations of that approach. If you are a solo independent journalist running a substack, you can do great work, but you're not going to have the backing of a major media organization that can provide you with a lot of staff to do in depth investigations.
- [48:33]
A
Or the time.
- [48:34]
B
Or the time.
- [48:35]
A
The time to spend months reporting out that Cash Patel story at the Atlantic, for example.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah, seriously, if you want to do, if you want to do really, really in depth investigative pieces, you can't live on Substack by publishing every three months. It's not going to. There's no economic model that makes that worth it. I know everyone gets into journalism wanting to be a New Yorker columnist that writes 5,000 word think pieces. And yeah, to an extent, that's not a realistic path in the journalism field except for a very lucky few. But at the same time, there's all kinds of journalism that you can't just do by yourself. You need a team.
- [49:09]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I know, we know and are close with Chris Best and Hamish Mackenzie who founded Substack. So if you guys are listening, that might be a place where you can invest some money and provide some Substack report is for journalists who want to come to substack, but maybe publish three or four pieces of deeply investigated reporting here. I don't know. So what's your background? Are you, do you have a history as a journalist?
- [49:34]
B
I was the editor in chief of the high school newspaper, after which I promptly retired from journalism. Now I'm not a journalist. I am a little bit of an interloper in this world. I joined RSF as our, our advocacy director in D.C. i have a background in political campaigns, actually, and so that transition made sense and I've just since become the North America director. But I would say globally, RSF staff are half and half journalists and something else. So we have lawyers and fundraisers and other investigators, people who may have some journalism in their background, but not entirely. And it's an interesting place to work because we have sort of a newsroom identity in how we approach things. And it's very important to us also to follow journalistic ethics and everything we publish lead by example in that way. But we're not really a news organization, even though we, we publish investigations and reports and that sort of thing. We are, we are kind of at the same time a media organization, but at the same time not a media organization, if that makes any sense.
- [50:40]
A
Yeah, you sound A little bit like, so FIRE has a research department. We put out reports, but we also do advocacy work, litigation and non litigation advocacy. We also have an educational component to what we do. We put on some conferences. So you guys aren't just a think tank?
- [50:57]
B
No, in fact, I would say we're definitely not a think tank. Yeah, I, you know, that, that conjures up images that I think are very antithetical to the RSF identity, to be honest. We're, we're doers, we're out there. So I talked about ppe, but you know, we've got this thing on Minecraft called the Uncensored Library that you alluded to before. We've got a satellite package that beams Russian language journalism into occupied Ukraine and Western Russia so that Russian speakers can still get access to the news. We've got technology that mirrors newspapers websites in countries where they're censored so that they can get around the censors and continue to deliver the news to their audiences while they're operating in exile. So. So we're always looking for ways to actually combat the enemies of press freedom.
- [51:43]
A
Yeah. Well, let's talk about that Minecraft world now. It's called the Uncensored Library. This is actually what prompted Emily, our producer and I to decide that we wanted to reach out to you to come onto the podcast because this is just a incredibly creative piece of advocacy. Incredibly creative way to advance the mission. The New York Times on March 11th of this year published an article about the Uncensored Library titled Where Censored Worlds Find a Safe Haven inside Minecraft. Now, I have to be honest, I was not familiar with Minecraft before I read this article. I guess I was familiar with the name and had this vague idea that it was a game, but I wasn't familiar with what the game was about and why or how someone might be able to build a world that housed censored works inside that world, and how individuals in countries where those works are censored would be able to access this world through the game and access that content. So for our listeners who aren't familiar, what is, what is Minecraft? It's like Legos on the computer.
- [52:49]
B
Yeah. Minecraft is the world's best selling video game. It's an open world game that's made up of the blocks of material and anyone can go in and build things and make their own little world. And it's a great platform for this. It's extraordinarily popular with young people. And so, you know, if you're not of a certain age or have children of a certain age, it's unlikely that you ever encountered Minecraft. A lot of RSF staff had to ask their kids how to even find this thing. So you're definitely not alone in that. But this all started seven years ago and it's really the brainchild of my German colleagues over in RSF Berlin. And in true German fashion, it came about while they were sitting around having beers and discussing. Isn't it interesting that video games still aren't censored in most of the countries where censorship is such a problem? And someone said, could we just put news in video games and get around the sensors that way? And they're like, maybe. So they started exploring that idea and they looked at a bunch of different games and they realized Minecraft is perfect because it's so popular, because it doesn't really have that many restrictions. The only restrictions are basically you can't swear because it's for kids. So I shouldn't even say this, but one of the ironies in the Minecraft library is that we have to censor some of it because there are instances of foul language that we, we had to turn into, it's not your fault
- [54:19]
A
we played on Minecraft.
- [54:21]
B
So yeah, there is a little bit of censorship in the uncensored library, but remember, there's eight year olds going in there, so I think that's okay. But we unveiled it six years ago on the World Day to End Cyber Censorship, which it always trips me up
- [54:35]
A
to say there's a day for everything.
- [54:37]
B
There truly is. And we introduced it and the thought was cool, we'll publish some content from around the world. We built different rooms dedicated to different countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and it's in this great neoclassical architectural style library in the game. And we just pulled a bunch of our favorite greatest hits of journalists we know who have been censored and who agreed to put their content in there. And we're like, yeah, this will be a good stunt for the day against cyber censorship and then we'll move on. It crashed on the first day because the interest level was so high and made them realize, oh, this might be a recurring thing that we're going to have to now work on forever. I don't think they anticipated that six years later their colleague in Washington D.C. would be coming in to do an interview on a podcast about it. And so what we know now is that the library has been visited by over a million different people since in those six years, the books that are in it have been downloaded over 10 million times. So we know it's hugely popular. And it's kind of got this dual purpose now, which is, on the one hand, we can put the things that are censored and make them accessible to people in those countries. Also, because the game is so popular, young people from other countries are going in and learning about press freedom, learning about censorship, understanding what's at stake in these fights. And that's amazing because it's so hard. You know, we can put out press releases and do podcast interviews, but how do you reach a 12 year old about press freedom? That's tough. This is a way to do it, which I think is amazing. This year, for the sixth anniversary, we decided, let's grow the concept a little bit. We have established that this is a good way to publish censored material. But there's a lot of places where the problem isn't overt state censorship. It's subtle pressure from the government. It is a lack of access, it is a lack of opportunity. It is a culture of fear. And what country best illustrates that problem in democracies? Right now, it's the United States. And so the United States room, instead of publishing a bunch of content that's outright censored, we've made it more like a museum exhibit. It contains a lot of content, sort of explaining the situation, as well as some artifacts. So there's a political cartoon in there from Anne Telnis. She was the Washington Post political cartoonist who resigned after she had a cartoon rejected that depicted Jeff Bezos offering a bribe to Donald Trump. She said to me, as the first time in 35 years I've ever had a cartoon rejected because of its content.
- [57:26]
A
Wow.
- [57:26]
B
And she knew right then and there that that was the end of her time at the Washington Post. And she graciously let us use that cartoon in there. But that's, you know, there's a fire
- [57:34]
A
report in there too there.
- [57:37]
B
Absolutely.
- [57:38]
A
That was actually when our producer Emily was perusing the library.
- [57:41]
B
With that. In hindsight, yeah.
- [57:42]
A
When she was perusing the library is the first book that she opened when she was like, it just so happened to be a fire report. Which is crazy.
- [57:49]
B
And there's also, you know, stuff like deleted government data that used to be publicly available on federal websites, like climate data, or a timeline of the January 6 attacks on the Capitol that became politically inconvenient for the current administration, so they took it down. But that's the kind of public resource that is good for the public, but also good for journalists who are trying to get their Facts straight. And so all of this is meant to illustrate that it's not just overt censorship. There are lots of ways that authorities try to control, cajole, weaken, or somehow restrict the press. And we needed to be constantly on guard against those, especially in democracies, not just in authoritarian countries.
- [58:29]
A
Well, let's take a stroll through the uncensored library. Now, our producer, Emily did a screen recording of her travels through the uncensored library. She had to cut it up a little bit because it's a big world.
- [58:40]
B
It's huge.
- [58:41]
A
It takes a while to travel through. So if you will do thus the kindness as we play this clip here for our video audience, of narrating what you're seeing for our audio audience as well as the video audience, and kind of tell us a little bit about the world. Emily, you want to queue it up? All right, so here we're at the start of the world.
- [58:58]
B
Yeah. So you sort of teleport into the world from a central hub in Minecraft, as I understand it. Again, I'm old. I don't.
- [59:07]
A
The instructions are on your website. Right.
- [59:10]
B
I take it for granted that they're true. I also don't know how to play Minecraft. I've been walked through this many times. And so there's this introductory text here that explains what this is, why we're here, what the problems that we're trying to identify are really setting the stage for us.
- [59:28]
A
Gotcha. And there's this big. It almost looks like cloud icon, kind of cloud icon that says truth. That's above what looks to be an ocean of some sort. And this book that introduces the world is on a pedestal. And now we're looking at the uncensored library from afar.
- [59:44]
B
Yeah. And to me, I'm always amazed looking at that. It's really a feat of design that a couple of designers who are passionate about both Minecraft and freedom of expression agreed to do for us on this. And they just did such a tremendous job.
- [60:03]
A
Crazy architect. Crazy good architecture. Now we're hovering above the central atrium.
- [60:07]
B
So this is the centerpiece of the whole thing, which is the Reporters Without Borders world press freedom map, where every country is color coded according to its relative press freedom level.
- [60:20]
A
And at the center of it is the index that is available as well.
- [60:23]
B
Yep. And these. This is the. The legend that tells you what each color says.
- [60:30]
A
Yeah. And you color code based on the restrictions.
- [60:34]
B
And I was afraid of this because we are recording technically before the day this comes out. Those rankings are not up to date. So we'll get those up to date. And you can. Folks can go look for themselves.
- [60:44]
A
You can walk or teleport to each wing of the library. And we just teleported to the United States wing, and we're standing in the center. And I believe there's a Statue of Liberty. That's what. Crying.
- [60:55]
B
It's crying. And actually that pool will continuously fill with water.
- [60:59]
A
Oh, wow.
- [60:59]
B
So if you. If you stick around long enough, it will just get higher and higher.
- [61:03]
A
And there was the fire report, the executive watch on actions taken by the Trump administration to censor speech. And Emily here is walking and looking at the various reports and books. There's a transcript from the Stephen Colbert and James Talarico interview. And now I believe we're in Saudi Arabia.
- [61:18]
B
Yeah, this is Saudi Arabia. The centerpiece here is a cage to symbolize all of the jailed journalists in Saudi Arabia or the dismembered ones.
- [61:27]
A
In the case of Jamal Khashoggi here, it looks like some of his works are featured as well. Now we're in the Iran wing, which hasn't had Internet as of this recording for something like, what, 45 days?
- [61:38]
B
More than a month, actually. If it's April 30th, I actually think. I think it's going to be 60 days.
- [61:43]
A
60 days. We're back in the atrium, looking up at all the flags of the various countries of the world. There's an icon here of what? A fist with a pen symbolizing the power of the press. Well, that is the Uncensored library. Very cool.
- [61:57]
B
Yeah. Very, very brief tour. I really encourage those of you who know how to use Minecraft or have children who know how to. To check it out because it really is impressive. This is one of those things that makes me so proud to work at rsf and I just get to take credit for the excellent work that other people are doing that I get the pleasure to work with.
- [62:18]
A
Well, thank you. This has been a. A pleasure as well, Clayton. The organization again is Reporters Without Borders usa, and his organization's latest World Press Freedom Index is available now. We'll be sure to link it into the show notes as well as link how to get access to this beautiful world called the Uncensored Library. I am Nico Perino, and this podcast is recorded and edited by a rotating roster of my fire colleagues, including Bruce Jones, Ronald Baez, Jackson Fleagle, and Scott Rogers. The podcast is produced by Emily Beaman. To learn more about so to Speak, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or substack page, both of which feature video versions of this conversation, including the tour through the Uncensored library. You can also follow us on X by searching for the handle Free Speech Talk. You can send us feedback@sotospeakire.org again, that is, so to speak, @fire.org and you can leave a review review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Reviews help us attract new listeners to the show. And until next time, thanks again for listening. The foundation for Individual Rights and Expression FIRE and the Flame logo are registered trademarks of the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.